Sandy Pearlman

Producer, creator, songwriter, manager and theorist for many of the most important bands and musical trends of the last 25 years. Described by the Billboard Producer's Directory as "the Hunter Thompson of rock, a gonzo producer of searing intellect and vast vision." Gonzo enough to be played by Christopher Walken in the infamous Saturday Night Live parody skit of the making of "The Reaper" (which Pearlman produced for Blue Oyster Cult). President and Owner of the seminal American alternative label, 415 Records. A founder of EMusic.com (the first of the downloading companies, way back in 1998). A principal of Moodlogic (creator of omniscient trans-media navigation and recommendation engines for the likes of Sony and Microsoft). By profession a visionary authority on the convergence of the Film, Video and Music cultures, with, the new culture of technology engendered by the Web. One of the few able to speak with equal authority, both, to, and, for these cultures. Framer of many of the key terms of the current public discourse concerning "the Future of Music." Visiting Lecturer on these issues at such assorted cool academic venues as Stanford, the University of Calgary, McGill and various Universities of California (Berkeley, Santa Cruz, MontereyÖ). Visiting Scholar at McGill. Woodrow Wilson Fellow in the History of Ideas. New School Fellow in Sociology and Anthropology. Consultant to overweight multinational entertainment conglomerates, stressing out on declining market share and growing irrelevancy: Sandy Pearlman is one of the crucial prime movers in the ever tightening embrace of Music by Technology and Technology by Music.

One of the first of the teen age Rock Critic cabal (see "Almost Famous"), he paid his way through school in the early 70s with his writing, actually inventing the use of the term "Heavy Metal" for that music, during his sojourn as an editor and writer at Crawdaddy magazine. He went on to produce (in some cases literally create) an impressive crew of diverse and uniquely innovative artists with attitude, a discography encompassing: Blue Oyster Cult, Dictators (the first "punk" record), Clash, Pavlov's Dog (the first Goth record), Dream Syndicate (kings of the L.A. Paisley Underground scene), Mahavishnu Orchestra, etc. During the course of this work he pushed the limits of existing recording technology, with breakthroughs, most notably, in the radical use of compression and analog/digital "concentric" stem based mixing and mastering techniques. For this work he has received (at last count) 17 gold and platinum records and was hailed (or blamed) by the Village Voice for creating "the Triumph of the Will guitar sound". He recently completed production on the new 100-minute magnum opus pending release for Space Team Electra.

He headed the seminal alternative label, 415 Records: Romeo Void, Translator, Wire Train, Red Rockers, Love Club, Manitoba's Wild Kingdom, etc. In this capacity he acted as executive producer for much of the 415 output. As songwriter he is best known for his association with the Blue Oyster Cult, with whom he virtually defined the whole Heavy Metal genre, writing about half of their catalog, culminating in their 1989 conceptual song-cycle, Imaginos: An album, which has, according to Google, launched 3 new religions and more than 11,000 obsessive "All About Imaginos" Web Pages. Ironically enough (for a founder of EMusic), Metallica recorded "Astronomy," one of Pearlman's Imaginos songs, for their notoriously ultra-Napsterized (therefore famously litigated), Garage Inc.

His management clients have included a panoply of influential artists in their respective genres, including Romeo Void (one of the breakthrough New Wave bands), Black Sabbath, Aldo Nova (principal song writer for early Celine Dionne), and again, the Dictators and Blue Oyster Cult. To ensure consistent profitability for these touring artists and their promoters, he pioneered the "mega-tour" stadium format of the 1980s, wherein a package of huge acts (for example Heart, Black Sabbath, Blue Oyster Cult, Cheap Trick, Metallica....) travel together, sharing promotional, production and travel costs, a format persisting today with Lollapalooza, Lillith and their spawn. These tours included the enormously successful Black & Blue (Featuring Black Sabbath and the Blue Oyster Cult). The midnight rock film mainstay Black and Blue, which Pearlman produced, was a by-product of these tours.

He just might be the only person (and certainly the only record producer!) on the planet, to have graced the covers of Mondo 2000, New Musical Express, Kerrang (the heavy metal bible) and the front page of the Wall Street Journal. The National Public Radio special on Heavy Metal, The Karamazov Vista, was basically the Sandy Pearlman show. Most recently he was interviewed on National Public Radio's All Things Considered regarding the Future of Analog Recording Technology. Last year NPR interviewed him, again on All Things Considered, soliciting his views on The Future of the Record Business. Besides the usual (and unusual) American suspects his views have been propagated through such venues as the BBC, Granada and Radio London (in the UK), the RTF, Antenne 2 and Radio Luxembourg (in France) and Deutsche Welle (in Germany). In 1992 (when Nirvana ruled the Earth) KIRO TV (CBS Seattle) produced a program regarding his take on the Seattle rock scene.

Last year CBC TV covered the seminar he organized at CMW in Toronto regarding the implementation of Alternative Compensation Systems (ACS). Pearlman's recent work in this field has put him at the forefront of the developing Alternative Compensation project. Having been so instrumental in overthrowing the Old Music Business Order, he has become prominent in that group of academics, lawyers, economists, intellectual property rights theorists and think tank denizens now attacking the problem of how is that artists, creators and rights holders are actually to be paid in the context of a radically de-monetized music business (and soon enough film business). In this regard his proposal for, and, numerical analysis of a "World Wide Information Industries Micro Tax", first surfaced at the Future of Music Conference at Georgetown University, has been receiving considerable attention, including that of the New York Times and NY Attorney General Elliot Spitzer's office which has invited him to make an in person presentation of his views on ACS. Stay tuned for hearings at a US Senate Sub Committee chamber nowhere near you sometime soon.